Sweden regularly features highly among the lists of the most innovative and technologically countries in the world.
Its capital Stockholm has produced more tech unicorns per capita than any other city in the world and around a fifth of the city’s workforce are in employed in tech-related jobs, transforming the Scandinavian country into a technology powerhouse.
So what can the UAE learn from the Swedish experience?
This will be the focus of the opening keynote speech delivered by H.E. Henrik Landerholm, Ambassador of Sweden to the UAE, at this year’s Arabian Business Technology Forum and Awards at the Jumeirah Emirates Towers on Sunday, March 31.
The ambassador’s speech will be followed by four exciting panel discussions looking at various facets from across the fact-paced world of technology.
Artificial intelligence
The Artificial Intelligence panel will kick off with a keynote speech from Soren Nikolajsen, managing director of Alawwal Bank, who will outline how Saudi Arabia’s oldest bank is embracing the latest technological advances.
Nikolajsen will be joined by Pavel Nesterov, principal data scientist at AI training and consultancy firm Reaktor, Ahmad Al Darwish, a founder at UAE-based drone pioneer Falcon Robotics and Ahmed Helmy, director of emerging technology at Avaya, along with a participant from Microsoft.
Sweden is also a pioneer when it comes to cashless economies and this is one of Dubai’s key technological priority moving forward.
Debating the core issues surrounding the future of payments will be a panel of experts including Adam Omar Ali, co-founder of Trriple, Wissam Khoury, managing director of fintech firm Finastra and Jeb Million, chief technology officer at American Express.
Big data
The Big Data panel will debate whether the theory that ‘data is the new oil’ has any merit and how companies can help customers navigate the vast amount of data produced on a daily basis, whether it is on social media or the stock market.
The keynote speech will be delivered by Nadim Najjar, managing director for the Middle East Africa of Refinitiv (formerly the Financial and Risk division of Thomson Reuters), who will then be joined in a panel discussion by Zubair Timol, partner at Meltwater, David Martínez de Lecea, CEO of Narrativa and a representative from global conglomerate SAP.
The final panel discussion will focus on digitalisation and how new companies are embracing and adapting to e-commerce and online shopping.
The keynote speech by Stephen Anderson, Clients & Markets Leader at consultancy firm PwC will focus on the latest results from their CEO survey.
The panel will consist of Musfique Ahmed, co-founder at Smart Crowd, an online real estate crowdfunding platform, Rami Shaar, co-founder and CEO of laundry app Washmen, Dan Heywood, technology director at Virgin Mobile and Sanjit Gill, general manager at Collinson Middle East, who will speak about how online firms can engender customer loyalty in the digital age.
Awards
The day will be capped by an awards ceremony later that evening where more than a dozen awards will be handed out to the great and the good of the technology world.
Some of the awards will include Fintech of the Year, Cloud Innovation of the Year, Artificial Intelligence Company of the Year, SME Tech of the Year, Innovation Award of the Year, Outstanding Achievement Award, Technology Visionary Award, Technology Entrepreneur of the Year and Tech Company of the Year.
The Arabian Business Technology Forum & Awards is being sponsored by Aston Martin.
For more information, or to book a seat at the forum or a table at the awards, please contact Natasha.Cristi@itp.com
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